GEBHART: Drugs and poor decisions cost Jimmy Cox everything

This not an easy story for me to write. For some readers, it won’t be much fun reading, especially those who knew the subject when he was a much younger man, idolized by many, admired by almost everyone who knew him.

His name is Jimmy Cox. As a schoolboy, they called him “The Collingdale Comet,” in tribute to the way he flashed across Delaware County gridirons in 1954 and ’55. Just about every major university in the nation wanted him to play on their football team. His future seemed unlimited. Then he suffered a major football injury. The doctor botched the resulting surgery. He never played football again.

That once glamorous future disappeared in a heartbeat.

I knew Cox when I was a young sportswriter, not all that much older than “The Comet.” You got to know hundreds of young men in my old job. You were drawn to maybe a dozen or so. Jimmy Cox was one of those rare dozen. There was something about him that made you like him very much. You wanted to be his friend.

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So when many years later I learned that he had fallen on extremely hard times, I tracked him down. I learned he was in jail. I couldn’t believe it. Not Jimmy Cox.

Much later, I was able to contact Cox again, thanks to a phone call from an old Collingdale High teammate, Joe Baker. I got in touch with Cox. Told him I’d like to write an article on him. He agreed. Told him “warts and all.” He agreed, although it seemed a bit reluctantly. But once we started talking, he held nothing back.

He told of the many poor decisions he had made, decisions that cost him his family, his reputation, the fortune he had made. Today, he lives alone in Florida, subsisting on Social Security and food stamps.

He quit a fairly good job at Scott Paper in Chester, purchased and lost a neighborhood bar in Chester, lost his family with it and spent the next 18 years as a highly successful bartender in Springfield. Then came the most disastrous move of all, taking up residence in Florida.

He operated a deli and sandwich shop on Merritt Island. Gambling debts forced him out of business. In his words, he started “hanging around with some very unsavory characters.” He began dealing cocaine. Unlike the deli, the drug business was an immediate success. Thanks to a courier making regular trips for him to Bogata, Colombia, Cox expanded from Florida to New England.

“I did this for three years,” he said. “The money was good, but I was tired of dealing with the very untrustworthy people I had to work with.”

Cox, who seemed to have a knack for going from bad to worse, then tried the marijuana trade.

“I met some Mexicans and went into business with them,” he said. “In four years I made a fortune. I made a million in just three years. In the last four months I was operating, I was clearing $340,000 a month.

“But I was spending almost as fast as I was making it. I bought cars for 13 or 14 people. I was paying rent for four or five more. I was laying out about $20,000 a month.

“When things started heating up in Florida, I moved to southwest Philadelphia, in a home just off Island Road. I bought three race horses and raced them all along the East Coast. Made money on all three. But at the same time, I was on the run from the FBI. I heard they were closing in.”

Cox said he never tried cocaine when he was moving it, but when he went into the marijuana business, he started using cocaine.

“I was addicted from 1990 to 1994,” Cox said. “The FBI arrested me in April of 1994, and I was sentenced to seven years in federal prison. A lot of the places, like in Oklahoma City, Atlanta and Fairton, N.J., were holdover prisons while awaiting trial. Most of the time, 4-1/2 years, was spent in Coleman Low, not far from Orlando.

“You couldn’t call it ‘hard time’ because mostly I worked in the yard, conducting bocce games and horseshoe pitching tournaments. That’s because there never was any violence on my record.

“But drugs cost me everything. My wife divorced me and my youngest son doesn’t speak to me. I lost most of my friends and went through all the money I had.

“The good news? Even though I was addicted from 1990 to 1994, I am totally clean today and have been since 2000.”

NEXT: Can there possibly be a happy ending to this tale?

Ed Gebhart is a retired public relations executive. His column appears Sunday.